For the last two years I have lived both on the west and east coasts and travelled by car, in between. In just about every place we stopped for food, gas or a night's lodging there were cupcakes. Cupcakes at truck stops. Cupcakes at breakfast joints in not so great neighborhoods. Entire stores devoted just to cupcakes. They’re certainly not my mother's cupcakes. They’re big, bold and always lavishly iced to almost impossible heights, packaged up in sweet little boxes, like gifts. Some cost more than lunch. It seems to me today’s cupcake craze goes beyond nostalgia.
This work speaks to excess and longing. Past the time when we were galvanized to "beat the recession", past the time when we were divided by "Occupy", stuck in the sameness of strife and waiting, don't we all just want a little indulgence? But there are always cupcakes, rising in defiance of continually failing personal economies as if, for each of us, there is always going to be more.
Waste or want?
I'm living in the urban South this year. Our apartment overlooks a freeway viaduct that also doubles as a homeless encampment. The commute traffic wakes me before dawn each morning, as it does the viaduct dwellers. I often watch them climb out from their camp as I sip my morning coffee in comfort. A disjointed reality and reminder of the bigger picture beyond the studio. 
From my artist residency at Wildacres in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. The studio was immense, the surroundings awe inspiring and the people absolutely wonderful and supportive.
Words have always meant a lot to me. I support my art practice by writing, researching and editing. These days though, words seem to follow me into the studio. Here you see studies for a larger, multi-piece interactive ceramic installation. Rather than indulge the delicate nature of ceramics, I want the viewer to interact with them, and in doing so, manipulate the original context.
